French post-structuralism theory was transformed when taken up in England by the native Marxist tradition; it thus came to intervene across the whole field of the human sciences. Through this fresh exploration of the relation between Marxism, post-structuralism and the theory of the subject, Antony Easthope contrasts the degree to which post-structuralism has made a radical impact on English and American national cultures. The book reprints for the first time an important 1980 interview in which Jacques Derrida discusses the relations (...) between Marxism and deconstruction. -- Back cover. (shrink)

Does the unconscious exist? Cultural critic Antony Easthope answers with a witty, lucid, informed "yes" and draws out its implications for the way we live, how we enjoy art, and how we think about people in society and history. Drawing on the writings of Freud and Lacan, he argues that the study of the unconscious is a way of analyzing meanings across culture as an effect of desire. Easthope tests for unconscious significance in an amazing variety of examples, including jokes, (...) Tampax advertisements, Hamlet , Hitchcock's Psycho , the life and death of Princess Di, Terminator 2 , Bob Geldof's autobiography, and the film Titanic. (shrink)